In 1998, the company bought me a film scanner, and the computer to go with it. Within a few weeks of tweaking and adjusting, I was scanning everything. That left two 500-sheet boxes of Kodak Ektamatic SC black-and-white, single-weight paper sitting on the shelves in my office. For a while I kept them, just in case I needed them, but by the following summer, I realized I would never use them, and decided to conjure some kind of fine art project I could shoot and print on this abandoned black-and-white paper. Since I have always been drawn to the high desert, I decided to go on a driving tour of New Mexico. That tour, in July of 1999, yielded less than I had hoped, since I am, by profession, a news and sports shooter, with little experience at the time shooting fine art in the desert. I might have made 15 passable images, but it served to inspire me to return and shoot black-and-white again in September 2000. My film was usually Panatomic-X for 35mm, and Verichrome Pan Film for medium format. Occasionally I would play around with Technical Pan Film or High Speed Infrared, or even more rarely, Ilford and Agfa films.

I have boxes and boxes of black-and-white prints spanning a couple of decades. When I get them out, I am reminded of the pleasure black-and-white shooting provided me, and of how much my photography owes this heritage.